Piri Piri Chicken

This was meant to be a one-off recipe...some friends (thank you again, Jason and Michelle) had gifted us some homemade piri piri (a lightly spicy pepper and oil condiment) that I needed to use up.  I marinated 2 spatchcocked whole chickens in it, grilled one, roasted another, and thought I was done with that.  Well, it turned out to be the best chicken we had ever had, so I was obligated to get the piri piri recipe from our friends and make more. 

I can't vouch for freezer-stability of this recipe for more than 2 weeks...there's a pretty high concentration of acid in the piri piri marinade which could begin to have a negative effective on meat quality after some point (how long? I dunno), but I can attest to 2 weeks' worth of frozen marination resulting in uber-tasty results.

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Gai Khamin

Turmeric is one of those super-foods Dr. Oz is always yapping about.  I've seen lots about turmeric as an anti-inflammatory/anti-rheumatic food for a decade or so, and in the last couple of years, it's getting looks for perhaps being a food that helps prevent Alzheimer's and other dementias.  Why not eat some more of it, I figure?  This dish has a LOT of turmeric.

This one does NOT pass the low sodium content test ::blush:: but it is so freaking good that it's worth it every now and then.  You could use less salt, especially if you use a food processor to grind down the garlic cloves instead of a mortar, pestle and elbow grease.

This absolutely has to be grilled.  Roasting will not get you the char, the carmelization, the crunch out of the spice paste on the skin which is what makes this dish.  I like using this mixture on cornish game hens because of the grilling...a spatchcocked CGH is easy to handle and cooks pretty quickly on the grill, though you could do a whole spatchcocked chicken, unspatchcocked chicken halves or bone-in chicken parts.

There are btw about a bazillion ways to transliterate the name of this dish out of Thai.  This is the one that seems to get the most hits on the interwebs. 
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Chinese Maple Chicken & Grilled Marinated Bok Choy

No fake maple syrup please.  Did you know that artificial maple flavor is derived from fenugreek seeds which are a dietary supplement commonly used by nursing mothers to boost milk supply?  Makes you wonder why Mrs. Butterworth is so curvy.  I'd personally substitute molasses for maple syrup here if no real maple syrup is to be had.

This marinade lends itself well to chicken in a variety of formats.  I had planned to spatchcock mine and freeze it in the marinade, but life throws curveballs and I wound up roasting the whole bird with only a brief marinating period.  I think it would be especially scrummy on grilled chicken parts, too. 

And the maple syrup concoction did double duty as a browning agent/dressing for grilled bok choy.  Love grilled lettuces! 

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Spatchcocked Chicken with Saffron Cornbread Stuffing

Quit giggling, it's a real word.  It basically means butterflying, but isn't "spatchcocking" so much more fun?   Chickens prepared this way cook faster and take up less freezer space so it's really a useful technique, whatever you call it.

You can do plain ol' cornbread stuffing if you want, especially if you're working with a boxed mix or store-bought cornbread to save time, but this is a superb cornbread recipe, if I do say so myself.  If you use a mix, do two boxes of a Jiffy-type mix or use 1 8"-9" pan of store-bought cornbread.
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